Posts tagged vertical-progression

The archetypal themepark MMO model, as popularised by World of Warcraft, is a race to the level cap in order to unlock the best content on offer. New content is tacked onto the endgame regularly, accompanied by improved gear and perhaps a higher level cap. It's a system that's designed to keep peop...

MMO players strive to obtain some kind of tangible progression each play session, but the method by which that progression is delivered varies greatly across the genre. Archetypal themepark titles frequently rely on level-based progression that culminates in climbing through gear tiers at endgame, ...

While we're all exchanging our ugly knit goods for better presents, the official Guild Wars 2 forums are hard at work on the final collaborative development initiative thread of 2013. The topic revolves around horizontal and vertical progression in GW2, one of the more divisive issues frequently di...

The week before last, I talked about a hybrid penalty, and I've realized that I did so without actually talking about how progression is slated to work in Elder Scrolls Online. Because ESO wants to emulate the existing Elder Scrolls games in an MMO, we see many of the same ideas ported directly fro...

One habit that I'm constantly trying to break myself of is assuming that everyone who reads this column or plays Lord of the Rings Online is going through (or has finished) the most recent content that Turbine's pumped out. Over the past few weeks, I've had discussions with Massively staffers, guil...

Sometimes we need to see certain things from different perspectives in order to understand the whole truth. If detectives listened to only one eyewitness, then the totality of the crime would be missing. They could head in the wrong direction, thereby letting a criminal go free and possibly detai...

Lead Designer Damion Schubert made an interesting statement during the last Star Wars: The Old Republic livestream. He proclaimed that although the designers don't want to completely eliminate vertical progression, the stats between the upper tiers of PvP armor will begin to flatten out.
As ma...

It's time to take a look at the new Guild Wars 2 item rarity: the Ascended tier. The first bits of Ascended gear came in with the Lost Shores patch, but we've been a little busy since then, have we not? Anyway, ArenaNet's Chris Whiteside took some time (like, the better part of a workday -- and t...

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Guild Wars 2, following the news that ArenaNet would be implementing a new tier of gear to the game. Studio Design Director Chris Whiteside and President Mike O'Brien took to Reddit today for an Ask Me Anything (AMA), accepting the brunt of the blame while de...

Earlier today, Guild Wars 2 players got their first real idea of what's awaiting them in the Lost Shores content update. They responded with an collective outcry against the introduction of Ascended items, which inhabit a new tier of item rarity. The roar of outrage was a little muddled, howeve...

We've all seen it. You might not have put a name to it, but it's there. As MMOs get older, certain dungeons become obsolete. Or maybe that fantastic top-level gear you once had to have is completely worthless now and isn't even in normal gear progression anymore. That is power creep, the phenomen...